“Ah…ah…” Zero groaned and looked up at me through narrowly opened eyes.
“Zero…! He’s alive!” I exclaimed, but Lunaère shook her head with a look of discomfort.
“…Whether for better or worse, Zero is a personality Veranta added afterward to control the mass of gathered powers,” she said. “It seems he’s still alive because that personality was independent from the main body, but…I doubt he will survive long. His heart has been destroyed. It looks like his brain is only barely functioning.”
“Oh…” I looked back at Zero.
We needed to call for Veranta. Zero didn’t speak, he never interacted with others. But Veranta was the person who made him, and they’d worked together for many years.
Besides, we needed to know how everyone was—not just Veranta, but Pomera and the rest, and we needed to know what was going on in the city. At the moment, the most important thing was to hurry up and rejoin the others.
Lunaère used magic to heal my wounds, including my missing arm, and then I lifted Zero onto my back and we left the rubble of the castle.
It looked like the chaos dragons had been wiped out. Or at least I didn’t see any in the skies. That at least came as a relief. There had been chaos dragons flying around even after Zoras cast Horus’s Destruction. If there were none now, that meant people were still working hard to kill them after the explosion. There was a better chance they were okay if that was the case.
We traveled through the city, now in ruins, and eventually found one area that looked like it hadn’t been affected by the blast. When we approached, we found a horde of golems with Veranta’s mask. Behind them was a group of evacuees and Pomera, who was healing the wounded.
“Kanata! Lunaère! You’re all right!” She looked up at us with an expression of joy as she worked on using white magic to heal the people.
And then…further in I saw four more Pomeras. I was taken aback, trying to figure out what was going on, but then the four Pomeras broke apart and mixed together, then reformed into one Philia.
It looked like she had learned to morph into Pomera because she was good at white magic. This let Philia help with the first aid.
Once again, I was reminded how useful Philia’s powers were.
“I’m so glad you two are okay,” I said. “But what’s going on here…?”
“We couldn’t move the people we were protecting to the tower using an item, like Veranta did,” explained Pomera. “I got Philia to help me put up a barrier in the square to protect people from the chaos dragons and create an evacuation point. Because of that, we managed to keep the people of the city safe from that explosion. I have no idea what would’ve happened if we didn’t have the barrier up…” She shuddered.
“That explosion” that Pomera mentioned had to be Horus’s Destruction. Pomera just happened to have a barrier up already to protect the people of the city, but that actually let her protect them from the blast as well. She and the other high-level people might have survived, since they were far away from the source, but a lot of citizens of the capital would’ve died if it hadn’t been for that barrier.
After that, Pomera gave me all the details. She told me Rosemonde, Kotone, Mitsuru, Noble, and even Lovis were okay. I was relieved to hear they’d managed to keep casualties to a minimum.
“Kanata, does this mean you two won against the higher beings’ last assassin?” she asked.
I didn’t know how to answer. I thought of Zoras, sacrificing himself to stop Zero’s curse.
Could you really call that winning? If Zoras hadn’t turned on the higher beings, then Lunaère at least would have lost her life. And the chances of her plan working had been slim, meaning there was a good chance Locklore would’ve been destroyed already by now.
“…I’m not really sure,” I murmured.
“D-do you mean it’s not over yet?!” Pomera paled. “The world’s still in danger?!”
“Oh, I guess you could say it’s over…”
I heard footsteps approach from behind as Pomera and I were talking. I turned to see Veranta.
“It appears you have successfully defeated the last assassin and rescued Zero. You two have done well. Perhaps this means we’ve evaded the immediate threat,” he said. My heart ached when he mentioned Zero.
I hesitated to respond right away, but I went to speak. This was something I had to tell him right away. “Zero’s…not going to last much longer. I’m sorry…I was so focused on doing something about the curse, I couldn’t save him.”
“I…see. I suppose it wasn’t likely you could reseal him. No need for apologies. You did well.” Veranta maintained an air of composure, but his voice trembled.
He moved toward me and held out his arms. I lowered Zero from my back and passed him to Veranta.
“His strength is completely gone…I see,” he said as he stroked Zero’s head. “Because Zero was a mass of powerful curses, I was concerned he would cause terrible things to happen in the world if he showed himself or spoke. Which is why I forbade him from ever speaking… But Zero, there’s no more need for that now. You may speak. I don’t even mind if you express all your hatred for me.”
Zero’s eyes opened slightly, and he looked up at Veranta. “V-Veran…ta…”
“I gave you a consciousness for the sole purpose of protecting a vessel filled with curses. I knew it was cruel from the very beginning. Never to show yourself, never to speak…I practically doomed you to a fate of being used by the higher beings in the end, only to die. And yet…I chose to do it, to give you awareness, only because it was more convenient for me.”
Veranta’s shoulders shook, his voice half a sob. Zero reached out and touched his mask.
“Veranta, thank you… You gave me a spirit. I learned things. I felt things. You taught me so much. I would have been born and died in the dark, the cold, just a curse. You gave me life. I’m glad…I could tell you how I feel…in the end. I was happy.”
His voice was frail, weak.
“Zero…”
“I just wish…we could have…talked more…”
With that, his head slumped listlessly, and his eyes closed, never to open again.
For a while, Veranta just stood there, unmoving, hugging Zero to his chest.